


Wanting

by Splinter



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Introspection, Pining, mention of masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 04:32:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7670173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splinter/pseuds/Splinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max in the desert, thinking of Furiosa</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wanting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [YoukaiYume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YoukaiYume/gifts).



> [youkaiyume](http://youkaiyume.tumblr.com/) wanted to see a fic with Max in the wasteland, realising that he misses Furiosa and the Citadel: "A lot of fics focus on how Furiosa feels and how Max deals with it when he's physically there. I like thinking of him out there by himself pining and wanting."
> 
> This is a thank you for so much beautiful art, and for her work and thoughtfulness in organising the [smutty_arts art prompt challenge](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Smutty_artsPromptChallenge).

Max wakes up, thinking of Furiosa’s dimples. It’s not a conscious train of thought, he just comes out of sleep with her smile on his mind. He had been almost embarrassingly moved by it, the first time he went back to the Citadel. The dimples had been so unexpected: something he’d not seen in her before, would never have guessed at. There had been many other changes: the girls in new roles, the Vuvalini already looking as if they’d been there forever, a new ease in the carriage of Furiosa’s head. Her coiled steel was less obvious, a loss of tension but not of power. Change in the wasteland usually meant death or at least decay. The Citadel had been full of good new things, but her dimples have stayed with him.

He’s parked in a bare strip of shade, under the overhanging rock wall of a canyon. It has rocks to lick for dew, and the dried-up bed of a stream; digging into it, he found more water, though most had gone to feed the poisonous plants clinging to the banks. A sandstorm had driven him to take shelter here, but it’s been a good find. 

Once he’s finished clearing the dust out of the engine, he plans to drive on to the next trading post. His current car is middling, which is a big step up from piece of shit. Without the interceptor, he has a system. Scavenge a wreck, fix what he can, upgrade it with salvage, barter it for a wreck with better bones than the last one. This one is as good as he can make it, ready to move on. He doesn’t dwell on how many of the improvements happened during his last visit to the Citadel. She’d offered him another car, refrained from raising an eyebrow at this one.

He’s been back twice. The first time, three hundred days after fury road, a Buzzard attack had pushed him off track, brought him within sight of the Citadel, with low supplies and little water. He’d driven up in a state of dread, half-panicked that he'd find the place arid and abandoned. Green on the cliffs was some reassurance, but gave no guarantee of who was in charge. That came when he was met by a patrol led by Toast, toothpick still in place but now dressed in canvas trousers, hefty boots and a great many belts.

Furiosa had been pleased to see him, he thinks – no, he knows. She’d been quiet and serious, and then dimpled at him for the first time. He doesn’t know what made her smile, what he’d said or done, but it had happened more often over the course of his stay.

He’d seen and praised (mostly in grunts) the work they’d done, the changes they’d made. When they showed him the Dag’s new baby, he had admired her with reasonable fortitude. He refused the sisters’ offer of a room, but had a bad night, trying to sleep in his car, fighting off nightmares and memories. Furiosa worked with him on the car in the morning. She mentioned the baby a couple of times, matter-of-fact, letting him adjust to the idea but asking no questions. He had left later that day.

The second time, he’d stayed longer. He moved from his car to the room, let baby Angharad hold his finger. He had looked up to see Furiosa watching with something so guarded that it took him a moment to recognise it as concern. It’s only because he knows her that he could read it at all. Later, he wondered why he was so sure of her moods. Later still, he realised just how often he thought about her.

Not long after that, he’d left. He doesn’t know how to be that vulnerable again. He’s not sure if she does, if she’d be prepared to try. They’ve already mistaken him for someone reliable, someone who can stay in one place. How much damage will he do if he tries and fails? Going now must mean less hurt than if he deserts them later. He hasn’t gone back, more than a hundred days on. 

It hasn’t stopped him thinking about her, about all of them. Too often, he remembers the gigahorse. He tries not to think of the first hour of that ride, which comes screaming at him often enough in nightmares. He tries to focus on the journey home, on the relief of seeing her get stronger, warmed by his blood. Once she had started to recover, they’d sat her up, leaned her against his shoulder. He had put his arm around her to keep her steady. When his thoughts slide back to it, he tells himself he’s remembering a better moment, one of the times he didn’t let someone down. He knows he’s being sentimental.

Is he truly remembering, or just imagining the warm weight of Furiosa in the circle of his arm, of her head on his shoulder? He knows he’s skating over the terror he still felt at the time – fear of infection, that she wouldn’t recover enough to face the Citadel when they got there. He pushes those memories away to linger on the scent of her skin, there under the smell of dust and blood and guzzoline, on the trusting way she had let him hold her.

More shamefacedly, shifting in his seat, he remembers how she’d felt under him when they fought, all that power and muscle and fierce, hot rage. Or how it had felt when she’d pinned him, her thighs bracketing his head with her crotch inches from his face. She’d been trying to kill him at the time, as he reminds himself, or sometimes permits himself to forget.

Thinking of her now, her dimples and her strength and her understated concern, he’s more than halfway hard. He hadn’t woken up like this. 

Alone in the desert, he has mental routines for dealing with erections. Sometimes he gets hard from thinking of Jessie, and that’s the simplest: remembering her, remembering loving her, what she liked, what they both liked. Other times, it’s just a bodily function. He can’t think of Jessie then, it hurts too much. He keeps remembering how he failed her. Instead, he thinks in fragments, hands and bodies and acts, detached from personalities. If he does add faces, what they have in common is not being dead. He’d deny having a type, but he thinks of the ones who have found some way of surviving this environment.

He might have used Furiosa like that once. Instead, it’s the other way round, his cock stirring at particular thoughts of her. As with Jessie, it’s a response, his body admitting how he feels. It’s another of the things he won’t let himself think about.

The next bartering post is at the edge of Citadel territory, a chance to pick up news. If he hears anything important, he could take it to the Citadel himself. Or maybe he could go back without an excuse, admit how much he wants to see them all, to see her. It’s a frightening thought. He goes on thinking about it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm at [lurkinghistoric](http://lurkinghistoric.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.


End file.
